MythTV

MythTV is a free software package to provide PVR functionality and much more - in essence it provide a full home media server. My Myth box is running Fedora 8 and is built around the following hardware:

• Claritas 260M AV-PC enclosure from Stands Unique
• GIGABYTE GA-7VM400AM uATX motherboard
• AMD Sempron 2500+
• Thermalright SLK-700 heat sink
• 512Mb PC3200 DDR DIMM from Crucial Technology
• Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 200Gb SATA hard drive
• NEC ND-3500A Dual Layer DVD Writer
• Two Twinhan Visionplus DVB-T tuner cards
• Leadtek Winfast A180BT GeForce MX4000 AGP card
• Home Electronics Ira 3 OEM IR receiver

The two digital terrestrial tuner cards receive the Freeview digital television service and display is via a 28" Hitachi widescreen television. Audio output is via a Sony DAV S-300 home cinema system.

The TV is connected using the VGA output from the graphics card via a home brew VGA-SCART convertor with the following mode definitions:

    ModeLine "704x576pali" 13.6 704 728 792 872 576 581 586 625 -hsync -vsync interlace
    ModeLine "720x576pali" 13.9 720 744 808 888 576 581 586 625 -hsync -vsync interlace

The reason for having two mode definitions is that most UK DVB broadcasts are 720x576 but some channels use 704x576 instead and having two modes allows Myth to be configured so that images never have to be scaled.

Some photos of the MythTV box and VGA-SCART convertor are available.

Last modified 21st April 2008 · Comments to webmaster@compton.nu